Room 9, 2018

Congratulations to Mika for receiving the Endeavour Award for Room 9 this term. You have definitely shown care for others and the environment!

This week for art we finally moved on to using clay to model our faces. We used water and skewers to try and make the different parts of our faces stick together. Not all of us were successful, and some parts have broken off, but they all look pretty amazing! We did not have time to paint them, but they will come home on Thursday and painting is a great holiday activity!

There will be no homework sheet this week and no spelling. I have collected in the homework books and spelling notebooks ready for Term 2. Readers will be sent home on Monday and Tuesday of this week, but they will need to be returned on Wednesday ready for the holidays.

Next term we will be moving on to learning about multiplication and division for our maths focus.

If your child is not confident with their addition and subtraction basic facts (to and from up to 20), including doubles and halves, then please work on these over the holidays and during the last week of term.

Nothing needs to be recorded unless this is how your child learns best. Short and sharp seems to work best, little and often. Repetition is important. They should know these facts instantly.

Also, skip counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s, then 3s, and 4s, up to 100 forwards and backwards.

This will really help them with their maths next term, so any work you can do on this would be very much appreciated.

Congratulations to Issy and Dylan for receiving certificates at this weeks middle school assembly!

On Friday we did a 'Swirl Experiment' to tie in with our instructional writing. It was interesting to follow instructions that someone else had written, but was quite tricky. It showed us the importance of writing very clear instructions so that anyone can pick them up and follow them easily.

We have a nice short week this week, see you back in Room 9 on Wednesday!

Children will be tested on their spelling and Keeping Ourselves Safe homework on Friday this week.

There will be no homework next week, but feel free to keep working on speed recall of the basic addition and subtraction facts, including doubles and halves to 20, e.g., 8+8=16 so half of 16 is 8.

We had our final Keeping Ourselves Safe session with Constable Murray on Tuesday afternoon. We learnt about how to deal with unwanted behaviour and touch. We need to remember the following:

Stop .... Walk .... and Talk

This means we need to say something like "Stop, I don't like it", then we need to walk away. Finally, we need to tell a person we trust about what happened.

We managed to fill four big rubbish bags during our beach clean up at Shoal Bay on Tuesday. Thank you very much to our lovely parent helpers - Gayle, Jasmine, Kate, and Kirsty. We couldn't have gone without you!

We had Sustainable Coastlines come and talk to us on Monday afternoon in preparation for our beach clean up trip on Tuesday. Here are a few photographs from the session.

We will have our library session on Wednesday this week as Friday is a holiday.

As we have two short weeks in a row because of Easter, the homework sheet this week covers Week 9 and Week 10.

Congratulations to Seth and Bella for receiving certificates at this weeks Middle School Assembly!

Here is the sharing of current events/news article summary timetable for next week.

The children decided which day they wanted to share on.

We linked our procedural writing with our art this week. We wrote a set of instructions for how to make a crayon rubbing and then we changed them to record how to make a print from a PVA glue block.

We have been learning about how to write instructions for writing. Last week we wrote a plan for how to make our own marvellous milkshake. On Monday we tested these plans to see if we'd left out any equipment, ingredients, or steps. We then wrote a set of clear instructions and made sure that we included everything so that other people could follow them easily.

Over the next fortnight we will be having four sessions on how to play squash. Here are a few photographs from our first session on Tuesday.

Congratulations to Mika and Luca for receiving certificates at this weeks middle school assembly, definitely well deserved!

Congratulations to everyone for a very successful swimming sports this week, we saw some great swimming! Thank you to all the parents who came to watch and particularly to those that offered to help out on the day, it was very much appreciated.

Well done to Levi, Lilah, and Mika for doing particularly well at the middle school swimming sports.

Congratulations to Zoe and Jamie for receiving certificates at this weeks whole school assembly, keep up the great work!

The Middle School Swimming Sports will be take place on Wednesday 7th March. The Year 3 children will have theirs between 1.30pm and 3pm. The children will need to bring their togs, towel, and goggles in a swim bag that day please.

If you are able to help on the day, please let me know as soon as possible.

Here is the homework for Week 6!

It was lovely to meet so many of you on Wednesday afternoon/evening this week. Thank you for making the time to come and talk with me, I hope you found it as worthwhile as I did.

One thing that came up quite often was the basic facts test that the children start doing in Year 3. We don't expect them to be able to answer all the questions now, but would hope that by the end of Year 6 they will be able to answer them all in the time given. We will be focusing on multiplication and division next term. If your child is confident with addition and subtraction facts up to 20 (e.g., 8+7, 9+10, 6+8, etc) and can answer these questions quickly, then please feel free to start working on their times tables and the matching division facts (e.g., 6x5=30 so 30 divided by 5 = 6).

By the end of Year 3 they will need to know their 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, and 3x and the matching division facts.

Here is the homework for Week 5!

Congratulations to Kobi and Ellie for receiving certificates at this weeks Middle School Assembly!

It was extremely difficult to choose only two people this week as all the children in Room 9 are amazing!

We have work on the walls! Here's a sneaky peek if you haven't managed to make it into the classroom this week.

Room 9 have made a great start to the year! Here is the Class Treaty that we decided on and signed this week ...